This page is for documentation of the Known Issues we’ve found when setting up Outlook 2011.

Installation:

  • Always make sure to do a complete rebuild of the Entourage 2008 database before upgrading to 2011.
  • We have not tested Entourage 2004 to Outlook 2011 transfers. It’s possible just not tested.
  • Before opening Outlook 2011 after the installation make sure to run all updates. Current software is 14.0.2 (December 2010).
  • Let it copy settings from the previous office installation.
  • Import the old account information into the new copy of office. Depending on the amount of mail it could take 10 minutes or a couple hours.
  • After the import is done check your accounts to make sure they’re functioning properly.
  • 123Together Exchange accounts have needed to be deleted and re-added after the import. I’ve been able to massage a few of them into working but they respond quicker if you just recreated it. There’s no wonky configuration for 2011.

Contact Search:

  • There have been plenty of questions about contacts searching.
  • Entourage 2008 had issues with spotlight so some users may have added the microsoft user folder as an exception in their system preferences. You’ll need to remove the exception in order to get search working in 2011… it uses the spotlight search to search in the application.
  • Also watch out for calendar delegations. Each calendar that you add to an exchange-enabled Outlook adds the corresponding email address to the On My Computer personal contact. Makes for weird address entries. Just remove them.
  • Even if you have unchecked the checkbox next to On My Computer in the contacts section of Outlook it still searches those records by default.
  • You can modify the folders it searches by telling Outlook to only search the exchange folder.

Calendars:

  • They suck.
  • You cannot delegate calendar events to another user.
  • You must uncheck all of the calendars but the one you’re editing and then create the new event.
  • You cannot switch a calendar event to another user unless you manually move it from one calendar to the next.
  • Microsoft is aware of the crappy calendaring in Outlook 2011 and they claim they’re working on it.